Neville Goddard on Lamentations 3:1-18 - Mystical Bible Interpretation

Read Lamentations 3 in context

Scripture Focus

1I AM the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

2He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.

3Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.

4My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.

5He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.

6He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.

7He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.

8Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.

9He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked.

10He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places.

11He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate.

12He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

13He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.

14I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.

15He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood.

16He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes.

17And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity.

18And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD:

Lamentations 3:1-18

Biblical Context

The speaker endures relentless darkness and affliction, senses divine abandonment, and describes physical and emotional decay, confinement, and bitterness.

Neville's Inner Vision

Here the cry of lamentation is not a foreign assault but a signal from consciousness. In Neville’s terms, you are not at the mercy of outer circumstances; you are the I AM contemplating a story. The 'rod of wrath' and the shadows are the old states of consciousness pressed into form by attention. Darkness and confinement reveal what your awareness believes about itself: that peace is elsewhere, that light is withheld, that you are a target. Yet the same text invites you to turn inward and claim your own awareness as the unchanging light. When you acknowledge that you are the I AM behind the scene, you disidentify from the weather of suffering; you revise the scene by feeling the presence of peace here and now. The sufferer is being taught to return to consciousness, to awaken to a perennial light that is not touched by the outward appearance of fate. Hold to the baseline of I AM as your true state, and let the imagined grip of pain loosen; the body and environment will follow in trust and the path will straighten as you believe you are already prospering.

Practice This Now

Close your eyes, declare 'I AM the light of my life now,' and feel that light filling every chamber of the body until the darkness recedes. Hold that feeling and carry it into your daily moments as the baseline of reality.